Stop & Stare
by Marqariley
Summary: Cute little JAM fic about a typical day at Dunder-Mifflin. R&R please!


Author's Note: Well, I freaking love One Republic, so while this fic has _nothing_ to do with the lyrics to this song, the song inspired me. This is a one-shot cute little JAM piece, just because one-shots are what I do best.

Disclaimer: I don't own anything related to The Office or Dunder-Mifflin. If I did, trust me, I would NOT be slugging through college.

**Stop and Stare**

"Dunder-Mifflin, this is Pam."

Jim Halpert lifted his head from a haze of calculating numbers for clients and smiled slightly.

"Oh…yeah Ryan. Hold on, let me see if he's available…"

"If that's Ryan," Michael Scott hissed from the doorway of his office, "I'm in an important meeting."

Jim smiled, knowing without turning that Pam was giving Michael an are-you-kidding-me-that-is-such-a-lame-excuse look. Hearing her sigh, he listened as she relayed their boss's message.

"Actually Ryan you know this isn't such a good time. Michael's in a…_important_meeting right now. With uh, an important client. But I'll let him know you called."

Pause. "I'll be sure to let him know. Bye Ryan."

Michael exhaled loudly. "Thanks Pam-a-lama-ding-dong," he said cheerfully. "You know Ryan's been all up in my 'biznas' lately, always calling and you know, he's just so…bleh! Boring! It's always like…Michael, you can't do this, Michael you have to call me back, Michael, why did you hit an employee with your car? I mean, dude, you're not my father!"

"Tsh, totally," Dwight Schrute added from his desk, his eyes never leaving his computer screen.

"Michael, Ryan says that he knows you're lying about having a meeting and if you don't call him back within 15 minutes, he's going to make David Wallace call you. Apparently you haven't been paying as much attention to the website as they'd like."

"Pam, this is why you should not lie. Because you're horrible at it."

"Michael…"

"Fine, I'll call him!"

Jim turned around and shared a smile with his girlfriend as Michael grumpily stomped back into his office. Whether or not he ever called Ryan back Jim doesn't know, or care.

Whenever he and Pam look at each other, it's like the world stops for a bit. He loves her smile, the way they turn a bit at the corners when she's trying to keep herself from being completely giddy and smiling goofily. But he also loves it when she acts like a little kid, because it's so different from the proper, reserved receptionist she's supposed to be.

It's a good thing, Jim believed, that he no longer sat at his old desk. It was hard enough to stop himself from always staring at her then, it would be even worse now that they were together.

"Dunder-Mifflin, this is Pam."

"No problem, let me direct you to one of our sales representatives, Phyllis Lapin-Vance. Hold please."

The best part about being stuck in an office with limited windows, crappy lighting, and a crazy boss was getting to hear her voice. It was the only fresh oxygen in the room, especially since it's not like he could just stop working and just stare at her all day. The pay was probably terrible for a job like that and other than being outside the realm of reality, was also quite creepy.

"Dunder-Mifflin, this is Pam."

It's crazy how one sentence could create so much zen and happiness in a split second. He grinned suddenly, as he remembered their first date, when Pam joked that she should use different accents every time while answering the phone.

"Kelly, how many times do I have to tell you? If you really have something important to tell me, e-mail me instead of calling the office. Please. Yeah, I heard about that too. Yeah, it was sad. Uh…I'm pretty sure Ellen Pompeo will survive the break-up of her fictional character on Grey's. Yeah. No, I'm sad for McDreamy too. Yeah."

He finishes reviewing contracts and staples the papers neatly. Putting it in a manila folder, he yawns as he observes his co-workers. Andy was pleading with Angela for another date right after work while Dwight was obviously trying very hard to make it seem as if he wasn't paying attention. Jim could hear Michael singing along to a old Selena song in his office.

"Fact," Dwight said forcefully and smugly, throwing a pointed look at Jim. "World of Warcraft is the most searched term across all four major search engines. Funny thing though, when I searched for 'Jim Halpert,' I got only 10 hits and about half of them were the rankings for the top salesmen at Dunder-Mifflin and I can't even count that low."  
"Wow, ok," Jim replied sarcastically. "That's crazy! But seriously, first of all it's sales_people_, ok, you cannot just exclude women from sales because that is sexist."

He could feel Pam smiling.

"Second of all, I'm_pretty _sure that this new video called two girls, one cup is a lot more popular then WoW. In fact, I think it's more popular than_you._"

"Impossible," Dwight countered. "I've never even heard of two girls, one cup."

"Yeah, it doesn't even seem like the type of thing you would go for. It's a little extreme."

With that, Jim knew that Dwight's buttons had officially been pushed. "Uh, there is nothing too extreme for me. Because I have seen far more gruesome things as a volunteer sheriff then you could ever dream of in a lifetime. What is two girls, one cup?"

"Oh, it's a new video series about these two girls who make a meal out of a cup of ingredients. It's really…" Jim searched for the right world. "It's really something."

From the copier, Kevin sniggered.

"Wimp," Dwight scoffed. "How is that extreme?"

"Oh, it's crazy how much they can make out of a cup," Jim said. Turning around, he smiled at Pam, who looked up and gave him her I-can't-believe-you're-doing-this-but-I-can't-look-away look.

"WHAT. IS. THIS?????????????????????????????"

Michael came running out of the office. "Dwight, can you not, you know- oh my god, that is disgusting."

"No, no Michael, it was Jim!" Dwight shouted.

"Dwight, turn that off!"

"I'm trying!"

"Dwight, what is wrong with you?" Jim mock-yelled, staring at his co-worker with disbelief. "This is just unbelievable."

"You-you," Dwight spluttered as Michael inhaled and exhaled loudly. "Ok, nothing to see here, folks."

Phyllis looked scared, Stanley rolled his eyes, Angela looked disgusted, Oscar was covering his ears, and Kevin…couldn't stop laughing.

"JIM!"

Two hours later, Jim let out a soft frustrated groan as Dwight "accidentally" knocked over his coffee for the third time all over Jim's desk. "Still angry huh?"

"I'm sorry Andy," Dwight said loudly. "Did you say something?"

Andy raised his head and darted his eyes quickly to the left before giving Dwight an odd stare. "Uh, no. But Jim just did."

"Idiot," Dwight muttered under his breath.

Jim looked up at the ceiling and prayed for the day to be over quickly.

"Dunder-Mifflin, this is Pam."

Excusing himself, Jim grabbed some sales receipts to make copies of. As he stood at the copier he let himself stare at Pam for a bit, noticing would her little quirks. For instance, she would slightly bite her lip when she was typing up office memos, and she would hunch over the keyboard a bit whenever she was playing any online games to hide the fact that she wasn't really working. The automatic way she would answer the phone always about 2 milliseconds into the third ring. The way she always made sure that the customer's phone call was being picked up before completely hanging up. Not to mention the cute way her eyes would dart to him sometimes and look away, though he could always see the curve of her smile.

After making copies, Jim strolled by the reception desk to get some M&Ms. "Dwight is killing me," he muttered softly. "I'm so lucky my computer hasn't suffered any damage from the coffee."

Pam shrugged slightly as she reached for a M&M too, deliberately letting her hand slide across his softly as a sympathetic and comforting gesture. "What did you expect? You got him to watch a nasty viral video and I've already gotten like ten forwards from Michael re: this subject."

"Yeah but still," Jim exhaled. "He ruined one of my clientele spreadsheets, and that's important for work, you know?"

"I know," Pam said sympathetically. "But hey, work's over in a half-hour, so do you want to go grab some food?"

"Yeah that sounds good," Jim said, backing up a bit. "What are you in the mood for?"

"Well…how do you feel about Italian food tonight?"

Jim grinned. "I'm always in the mood for Italian. I love Italian food."

Pam tried to conceal her blushing and her goofy huge smile. "Good."

As Jim settled back into his chair, he was thankful for the billionth time that he worked in the same place Pam did, because without her, he would probably end up crazy like Dwight, crazy competitive like Andy, or horribly jaded like Stanley.

Automatically, he turned slightly to look at Pam. He still wished he had that staring job though. It would have been easier to deal with, even with the probable loss of health insurance.

A/N: Wow it's been a LONG time since I've written anything and it kind of feels good. This is my first Office fanfic too, so be gentle! Also, in NO WAY am I advertising the 2girls1cup video (which is why this is rated T), which I haven't seen but only know about. I just thought it was something funny to put in there since that's actually what my friend said to try to get me to watch it. Once I saw the raunchy ads though I quickly exited, so WHEW, saved myself on that one eh? Send any questions, comments, flames, whatever to and thanks for reading!


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